Daytona commissioners may settle $456,369 discrimination suit

Eileen Zaffiro-Kean @EileenDBNJ

Tuesday

Sep 4, 2018 at 6:20 PMSep 6, 2018 at 4:07 PM

Former city employee Sonja Wiles filed a flurry of complaints and lawsuits against several top city officials alleging gender discrimination, harassment, retaliation, gender-based hostile work environment, First Amendment violations and Family & Medical Leave Act violations.

DAYTONA BEACH — A longtime city employee who was fired three years ago is now poised to receive $214,655 in lost wages and damages, a $23,214 payment to secure a spot in the Florida Retirement System and $218,500 to cover her attorneys' fees.

The ex-employee is Sonja Wiles, who filed a flurry of complaints and lawsuits against several top city officials alleging gender discrimination, harassment, retaliation, gender-based hostile work environment, First Amendment violations and Family & Medical Leave Act violations.

At their meeting Wednesday night, city commissioners will decide whether to authorize the full $456,369 payment to the terminated Public Works administrative coordinator. The payment would be a key part of a proposed settlement that would end Wiles' federal lawsuit against the city and City Manager Jim Chisholm. In March, she reached a separate settlement with former Deputy City Manager Ron McLemore, who oversaw Public Works.

The $456,369 payment and terms of the settlement agreement would release the city and Chisholm from all claims. As it stands, the federal lawsuit against Chisholm and the city is set to go to trial in December.

The city has run up legal bills in excess of $1 million defending against Wiles' allegations. The city paid the first $350,000 of that tally, and the rest will be covered by the city's excess insurance carrier, Lexington Insurance Co./AIG, according to city documents.

Wiles and her attorneys would be due their payments within 15 business days after the agreement went into effect. The settlement specifies that Chisholm individually will not make any payments to Wiles.

The city was represented by Orlando attorney Benton Wood, and Chisholm was represented by local attorney Noah McKinnon. Approval of the settlement has been recommended by Wood, City Attorney Robert Jagger, the city's human resources director and the city's Incident Review Committee.

"In light of the significant potential expense to the city of continued litigation with Ms. Wiles, and the uncertainty of litigation outcomes, I concur with the recommendation," Jagger wrote in an Aug. 30 memo to city commissioners.

The potential settlement came out of an early July mediation led by mediator Kay Wolf and attended by Chisholm and Wiles. On Tuesday, Wiles declined to comment on the legal matters surrounding her.

"At this time, I have to refer you to my group of lawyers at Morgan & Morgan. James Henson, Anthony Hall and Jolie Pavlos. Business Law and Employment Group," Wiles wrote in a brief email Tuesday afternoon.

Henson said in a brief phone conversation Tuesday that he didn't wish to comment at this point.

The settlement agreement says that "Wiles still stands by her claims in their entirety against the city and Chisholm." It also says that "the city and Chisholm deny Wiles' claims in their entirety."

Wiles worked for the city from 1992 until November 2015. She held various positions in the Police Department and Public Works Department, was promoted a few times and twice received 15 percent raises, according to city records.

Although she worked for the city for 23 years, the settlement agreement would allow her to qualify as a 30-year employee under the Florida Retirement System. The agreement also rescinds her November 2015 termination and classifies her as a city employee who resigned in November 2017.

Wiles, now 52, has lodged several complaints, beginning with her charge in July 2014 that she was sexually harassed by former City Architect James Hanis and that he made inappropriate comments to her. About a month after Wiles formally made several complaints against him, Hanis received a one-week suspension without pay and an order to have no contact with Wiles.

The harassment claim was sustained by city Human Resources Director Jim Sexton, according to city records, and Hanis resigned in June 2015. In his resignation letter, Hanis said he was leaving because he had accomplished what he wanted to in his 10 years as city architect.

In February 2015, Wiles also leveled sexual harassment charges against McLemore. McLemore resigned before an investigation got underway, according to city records. McLemore’s February 2015 resignation letter detailed how much he enjoyed working for the city and said he planned to retire in March of that year. He went on to work for the city of DeBary as the city manager there.

As all the allegations came to a head, Public Works Director Steven Richart resigned in November 2015. Wiles was fired the same month.

Wiles filed an EEOC complaint in late 2015 alleging discrimination. It's not clear what became of that complaint.

In the fall of 2015 the city hired an investigator to probe Wiles' allegations. That investigator was Alva Cross Crawford, a practicing labor and employment attorney based in Wesley Chapel.

Crawford wrote a 20-page report with about 200 pages of backup documents. In the report, Crawford wrote that many of Wiles' contentions were "nonsensical" and that Wiles "misconstrues statements."

Crawford wrote that there was no reason to think anyone in Wiles' chain of command, including the city manager, were discriminating against her because of her gender. Wiles said in an email to The News-Journal in 2015 that she believed the report was "one-sided to benefit the city, and did not include all of my evidence including emails and all witnesses were not interviewed."

Wiles, who maintained she had "23 years of consistently excellent evaluations," said the report "trivializes and minimizes very serious long-term and permanently lasting effects of retaliation" and discrimination against both women and minorities that she believed permeated the city.

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